A crowded Forrest School
is just spaced out

By Tom Waring
Times Staff Writer

Space is tight at the Edwin Forrest School.
"We have nine-hundred children," said principal Patricia Epps, whose elementary school has five classes per grade. "We can’t move."
Thanks to a small but persistent group of parents, the School District of Philadelphia is going to do something about the overcrowding.
Last week, an architect and a project manager updated the community about a planned expansion of the school at 7300 Cottage St. The school district will be building a nearly 24,000-square-foot Primary Education Center to house pupils in kindergarten through second grade. It’s set to open in September 2007.
The building will feature 13 classrooms, offices and a multipurpose room that will serve as a cafeteria and auditorium. It will be air-conditioned.
The $6.2 million project also will include a parking lot, playground equipment, benches and landscaping. The new structure will be built along the Walker Street side of the campus, stretching from Bleigh Avenue to Aldine Street. The two outdoor basketball courts will be relocated.
Third-, fourth- and fifth-graders will remain in the existing building. The portable building that currently houses kindergartners will stay, with an unspecified use.
Parents and neighbors largely support the plan.
"It’ll be a real jewel for Holmesburg," said Karen Lash, president of the Forrest Home and School Association, who believes property values will rise and the neighborhood will stabilize.
Another community meeting will be held in the winter, before construction documents are completed. A contractor will be selected by April, with School Reform Commission approval to follow. Groundbreaking should take place next summer.
The principal and parents hope that the expansion will allow the school to offer an art program or create more library shelf space. Right now, most of the books are in boxes.
Neighbors at the Nov. 2 meeting liked the proposed exterior look of the building and hope the construction will cut down on beer parties, drug activity and all-night basketball games.
"The new areas will be lit," said Jim Winkler, of Converse Winkler Architecture.
A few neighbors were hoping that there would be new fencing around the perimeter of the property. Instead, designers will repair the existing fencing.
"We’d rather put the money into the building," said Tim Trzaska, the project manager.
Some neighbors are worried that the structure will have the look of a compound, preferring that an addition — rather than a new structure — be built.
"There was no real good way to attach the new building to the old building," Trzaska explained.
Anyway, Winkler added, the school district wanted the younger students separated from the older ones.
In 2007, Forrest is scheduled to begin converting to a kindergarten-to-eighth-grade school. Of course, the school district would have to narrow the school’s boundaries to accommodate three more grades.
"I’m really looking forward to a K-8 school," said principal Epps, who has been on the job for two years. "Parents prefer to keep their kids in a K-8 school."
Lash, who attended the Disston School from kindergarten through eighth grade, said students do better socially and educationally in a K-8 school.
"They know the teachers, and the teachers know them," she said. "It’s hard when you start over. It’s good to be part of a school community before going to high school."
Paul Vallas, CEO of the School District of Philadelphia, is a proponent of K-8 education. The conversion already is underway in the East Region, the fastest-growing region in the city.
Karen Bitting, director of school support for the region, said the Holme, Pollock and Brown schools have added sixth grades this year. That means the only sixth-graders at the Austin Meehan Middle School this year are from Forrest. The classroom size is a mere 18.
Bitting said Meehan might eventually convert to a K-8 school, adding that suspensions and serious incidents are down at the school so far this year.
The Allen M. Stearne School will add sixth grade next year, with plans for the Henry W. Lawton and William H. Zeigler schools to have K-8 students on campus. Right now, Zeigler’s fifth- through eighth-graders are at Mater Dolorosa, a Frankford Catholic school that closed two years ago.
An elementary school will open in September 2007 at G Street and Hunting Park Avenue to relieve overcrowding at the Francis Hopkinson School.
All of those initiatives are meant to fulfill Vallas’ goal of creating K-8 schools across the city to improve the educational climate for students.
"The fewer transitions you have to go through," Bitting said, "the better." ••
Reporter Tom Waring can be reached at 215-354-3034 or twaring@phillynews.com